Thousands of gun owners show up at the legislature, testimony falls on deaf ears

Hartford, Connecticut, January 2013:

On January 19th, at least 1500 gun owners braved the bitter cold and gathered on the steps of the state capital demanding an end to the onslaught of bills that seek to make them further victims of a madman. Speakers spoke of rights, of being victims and pledged to never be victims again. The event was marked by a huge amount of passion, but was completely peaceful and uneventful. The capital police made remarks about how they did not need to police the pro-rights people at the event, only the handful of anti-rights activists who continually tried to stir up trouble and were ignored by the participants until they were escorted from the event by the capital police.

On January 28th, gun owners made a record show of force inside the Legislative Office Building, once again braving bitter cold temperatures, snowy roads and taking time off of their work. This time, somewhere over 2000 gun owners piled into the legislative office building creating ridiculously long lines at metal detectors meant to slow and discourage their arrival. They packed at least 5 large hearing rooms including the largest hearing room in the Legislative Office Building which served as the main hearing room.

Thunderous applause followed pro-rights testimony; as sure a sign of the probable 100:1 ratio of pro-rights to anti-rights supporters as the sea of bright yellow “Another Responsible Gun Owner” stickers that Coalition of Connecticut Sportsmen handed out. They brought 1,100 stickers and ran out. The stickers became a hot commodity as they were in such spectacular demand. MSNBC and other media outlets tried to smear the pro-rights supporters that attended by accusing them of ‘heckling’ the father of a Newtown victim. MSNBC went so far as to drastically edit the video for that effect. They have been called out on this, and the president of MSNBC, Steve Capus is now resigning amid this scandal, the fifth of such scandals that MSNBC has perpetrated and has been found guilty of.

During the hearing, many pro-rights supporters were shocked and offended that Senator Beth Bye was ignoring testimony to use social media that included mocking and complaining of the pro-rights people testifying and even going so far to ‘participate’ through Twitter in a ‘drinking game’ that sought to mock the people she is supposed to represent.

Perhaps Senator Bye should follow in Mr. Capus’ footsteps and step down from her position since she so clearly does not take her responsibilities seriously?

Throughout all of this, the pro-rights side has been hearing rumors, and it now seems confirmed that the legislature is planning to use ‘Emergency Certification’ to bypass public hearings and to railroad hundreds of thousands of gun owners in Connecticut and make many of them into instant felons while potentially confiscating their personal property.

This is simply unacceptable and immoral.

The legislative committees and anti-rights legislators keep pretending to represent the people while clearly ignoring and mocking the people of Connecticut in not-so-subtle manners. They have overstepped their bounds in the proposal of ridiculous and unconstitutional bills which have further insulted the pro-rights side and made compromise next to impossible.

They claim to be doing the ‘will of the majority’ and listening to ‘the people’, while ignoring the obvious 100:1 pro-rights to anti-rights ratio that exists in this state. They also clearly ignore the fact that mob rule (or small, vocal minority rule) does not give them the power to circumvent due legislative process and people’s constitutional rights.

If we thought mob rule was a reasonable way to govern though, the Courant’s recent online poll showed that only 5.6% of the people polled favored the current legislative proposals out of a total 1941 responses. The anti-rights supporters and legislators continue to be a radical fringe element in our society.

We must demand that the people be heard on every bill proposed and that the legislature give us our due legislative process. This issue is too important and too divisive to ram down people’s throats through heavy handed edicts.

Connecticut Carry is dedicated to advancing and protecting the fundamental civil rights of the men and women of Connecticut to keep and bear arms for defense of themselves and the state as guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Connecticut.